


A toast to love and friendship

by PoetsAndPunks



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Deaf Combeferre, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4831814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoetsAndPunks/pseuds/PoetsAndPunks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre is deaf but has learned how to use his voice. Courfeyrac recalls a memory from Ferre's first ever public speach, how the computer wasn't working and why Grantaire behaved awkwardly for weeks afterwards.</p><p>"‘No worries, it’s just the PowerPoint. It’ll take forever. Gay marriage will be legalized before it’s done’, I joked to calm my friend down, ‘I promise you can be E:s best man as long as I get to pick his wedding dress’. Combeferre didn’t laugh but the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease a little. Ferre wasn’t looking at me but out at the crowd when he replied with fast motions, ‘That’s a nice thought, although we both know E won’t marry at all until R proposes, no matter how legal gay marriage is’."</p><p>Please do really check the notes at the end :) This story is based on an idea I saw floating around the internet a few monts ago - creits to whoever came up with it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A toast to love and friendship

”I met Enjolras in first grade. He was this cheeky little boy with shoulder length, blonde hair and missing front teeth. Even though he could already both read and handle basic addition and subtraction he managed to be the poor teacher, Madame M’s worst nightmare; constantly pointing out gender bias and dissecting the substantive value of our first reading book. ‘Bonjour, je suis Luis, j’ai un lapin’, didn’t quite cut it for this guy, who was already reading the most intricate children’s literature, like Narnia, Pippi Longstocking and even Watership Down. I knew we had become friends when I found an empty pencil case in the school yard and he helped me put up this huge search party for its owner and we afterwards played Atlantis (The Lost Empire) in the forest. I was Milo and he was Kida – it was very not-romantic but very very fun!

A few years later I met this other guy in my Boy Scout unit. I noticed him because he was standing more or less on his head in an anthill, taking notes about in which directions the insects were running, trying to find their pattern. I stepped up to him and asked if I could join. When he didn’t react I tapped his shoulder. In the little Peter Pan-notebook the boy wrote that he was deaf but could read lips – and that’s how I met Combeferre.

I knew my two friends would get along awesomely so I introduced them to each other the very next day in the school yard – Ferre being two years younger than us went to the same school but we had never had the chance to run into one another. Enjolras was on fire the moment he learnt Ferre read lips and spoke sign language – E had for weeks been trying to teach himself Esperanto with minor to moderate success – and Ferre made a mental vow of eternal friendship when the then eleven-year-old Enjolras quoted Voltaire. Yeah… And so the triumvirate was formed. 

E and I learned that Ferre does actually speak vocally even though he was really hesitant about it back then. He had been taught at what volume to speak but of course could not know how he sounded, or what any sound sounds like at all. Gradually he became more confident to talk aloud with us but mostly that wasn’t needed since E and I mastered sign language in a matter of months. It was our secret language, as kids and teenagers it was more than convenient! Even deaf people couldn’t always understand us since Ferre had developed a certain “accent”. E and I could’ve easily signed test answers to each other in class but Enj strictly forbid it, referring to Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy about moral. That’s the kind of person he is, and was, even as a kid: righteous and fair. On the other hand, we did regularly “steal” leftover food from the school dumpsters to hand out at the refugee centre, where we started helping out at age 16 (14 for Combeferre) – and sign language was very successfully used “illegally” in those operations... 

I think Combeferre and I started to suspect Enjolras was gay around the same time as we started working at that centre. I was dating my first girlfriend and Ferre was madly in love with some girl with whom he used to catch eyes and exchange smiles at the renaissance literature shelve in the library; while E just kept re-watching RENT and looking up information on LGBT-rights activists. It was New Year’s Eve when he told us about his sexuality and on January the first he told his parents – who are great and were uncloudedly happy he had come to terms with himself but made no big deal about it. Because, let’s be real, he was still the same, fierce and tender at the same time, like a true hero in one of Jehan’s old poems. Enjolras had discovered he was homosexual, but for years he still used to claim his only love was Patria; to which Ferre used to tilt his head and sign ‘What about freedom?’ and I used to jokingly ask if me and Ferre didn’t count at all. 

The plan was always for the triumvirate to move to Paris after graduation. We’d share an apartment and Ferre would study medicine while E and I were to become layers. When Enjolras and I graduated one year before Ferre – he had skipped a grade – we ended up moving into different apartments in Paris; due to inheritance and housing markets and student accommodation and university application and other stuff. Our places were only one block apart though, so there was no real problem.

Whenever Ferre came to visit he stayed at either place but after young Pontmercy moved in with me he usually slept at Enjolras’, and the next autumn he moved in there too. It was already that first year in Paris that Enjolras formed what started out as a student organisation against discrimination, Les Amis de l’ABC, a wordplay on ‘abaissés’, the lowered, the underdogs. But… Because dear Enjolras is ambitious and heroic and has a slight hubris, the society soon was enlarged to encompass not only law students but students from all faculties and all universities in Paris, and even some who weren’t even enrolled at any schools at all.”

Courfeyrac nodded to Feuilly with a smile.

“Les Amis now dealt with injustices on all levels. Through the group we did not only find a means of provoking change in a profoundly sickening society, not solely a creative outlet, a meaning, but… we found friends, a second family. Our triumvirate had found Bahorel, Feuilly, Jehan Prouvaire, Eponine, Jolllly-Lesgle-Chetta… and Grantaire. 

Grantaire was introduced to us as a student of history and art, a cynical multi-genius who hated everything except Serge Gainsbourg and red wine. Bahorel brought him to a meeting and to be honest I didn’t think he’d stay around. R spent the evening drinking and drawing different natural disasters – for some reason I remember that. By the end of the evening he and E had gotten into a serious fight about Napoleon’s part in popular culture. I was pretty certain we had seen the last of that dark, curly head and the crocked, almost kittenish smile that went along with it. 

But no. To our great happiness I was proved wrong. At the next meeting Grantaire was there again, drinking, drawing, arguing with Enjolras. It became a pattern. And the guy grew on us. Grantaire made jokes with me, Bossuet, Joly and Bahorel, went to art galleries with Jehan, Feuilly, Musichetta and Ferre and basically became the un-biological brother of Eponine. 

I have vivid memories of the night when he, Bossuet and I hired a small rowing boat and we went cruising the Seine, ending the night on the roof of Grantair’s house, all dressed in lady’s clothing and in the company of a cello. None of us plays the cello and no one was even particularly drunk! … But let’s not go into further detail. 

Then there was the time when Grantaire was to lend Ferre a book about ancient Greek sculptures. He came to Enjolras’ apartment – where Ferre did not yet live but was staying for the week end – with the book neatly wrapped in hand drawn wrapping paper with grape vines and sandals, and with the most terrible flue. Ferre, who’s both intelligent and kind, did not let him leave to walk home in the rain so the three of them drank tea and played Trivial Pursuit the entire afternoon. Ferre remembers R:s slight redness on the cheeks – that was not fever caused by some virus or bacteria – and E nervously clearing his throat every time he had to look at Grantaire wearing his own red hoodie, which Ferre had made R borrow since R’s own clothes had gotten damp during the walk.

During meetings with Les Amis Combeferre had started to quite frequently use his voice to make points and explain plans of action. Within our little family – which also Grantaire had quickly become a part of – he wasn’t nervous at all, although he still dreaded speaking in public. I think all of Les Amis had picked up some basic sign language, like their own names and the word revolution, but it was still more or less the secret language of Combeferre, Enjolras and I.

The first time Combeferre really did a public appearance, speaking in front of a crowd, was during his first year officially living in Paris. Les Amis had organized a mini seminar on the first floor in the bar Corinth one October evening. The theme was ‘Disabilities and the Education System’ and since Combeferre is deaf and has attended a normal school from the beginning, it was obvious he was going to host a small introduction. Joly was up there with him on the little, provisional stage, and as was Musichetta. Joly has had an artificial leg since an accident when he was ten and Chetta has diabetes – she doesn’t classify it as a disability at all but she was there anyway, mostly as moral support for Joly.

… But Ferre had no one and I felt pity for him, I could tell he was nervous from where I sat in the audience at a table with Marius and Cosette – whom we had actually had the pleasure to officially meet only that same night. Enjolras was talking into a microphone from the back of the room, telling everyone to get seated, buy something to drink and be patient, because the presentation we had prepared would take a little while longer to get working. Needless to say, Ferre did not hear what E had announced, and he signed me a question. ‘No worries, it’s just the PowerPoint. It’ll take forever. Gay marriage will be legalized before it’s done’, I joked to calm my friend down, ‘I promise you can be E:s best man as long as I get to pick his wedding dress’. Combeferre didn’t laugh but the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease a little. Ferre wasn’t looking at me but out at the crowd when he replied with fast motions, ‘That’s a nice thought, although we both know E won’t marry at all until R proposes, no matter how legal gay marriage is’.

Ferre’s hands hadn’t even stopped moving when I heard a surprised cry from Lesgle and I looked over to see he was drenched in beer from the waist down. Grantaire who sat next to him was dry but coloured in a peculiar shade of pink above the shirt collar. ‘As he should be’, I remember thinking, ‘it really is shameful to be this drunk, throwing drinks around, at 19.30 – and our friends are holding their speeches!’. But Grantaire just kept looking back and forth between Ferre up on the stage and I – staring, actually, his eyes looked insane.

I remember seeing Feuilly laughing until the point where he got a hiccup. What was this? If Feuilly had understood what was signed that would sort of be explainable, Feuilly teaches himself everything and loves every aspect of every culture. But R…? Marius I could somehow have understood, as he speaks four languages fluently. Then again Marius had been a little too busy to learn our sign language lately, he had concentrated on learning the braille to be able to write letters to Cosette.

R? Had he learned sign language and had he understood what we said? Would that explain his clumsy attempts to clean Bossuet’s trousers and how he then just excused himself to walk away and stand in front of some plastic flower, eyes still the size of tennis rackets? It had been pretty obvious to everyone that Grantaire had feelings for our leader, and at least to me and Combeferre, who knew Enjolras, it was pretty obvious that those feelings were reciprocated too. ‘Maybe R didn’t know E was gay?’ No, that still wouldn’t explain this… 

The seminar went great and the audience came up with several good ideas on how to include destabilized kids in extracurricular activities, some of which we forwarded to the authorities. Ferre did a wonderful job with presenting the topic. Grantaire acted weird all evening. When all of us afterwards went out for drinks he looked panicked, stared at Enjolras and went home – as the first one from the entire group! E of course thought he had done something wrong and was an emotional wreck. Things were weird for a while… Finally E worked out the nerve to apologize to R for hurting his feelings in their last debate about panopticism as a symbol for French society – or whatever E thought he had done.

I’m not totally in on the details here but somehow that turned into Enjoltaire’s very first date. Finally! After over a year of watching these two dance around each other, hurting each other by accident and generally just being miserable over each other, they were now finally dating! 

Because they’re both assholes, though, they didn’t tell us about the relationship up front, but staged it as a fight about performativity. Both of them got really worked up and stood 20 cm from each other yelling. And then they kissed. And about ten chins fell to the floor – I think there still must be marks in the floor of the cafe Musain.”  
Courfeyrac paused as everyone laughed and cheered. He raised his glass and put it down again on the table.

“Today we make a toast for France, a country that has finally taken one more step towards equality, and to Enjolras and Grantaire, two of my absolute best friends, who have now gotten married and can forever celebrate their love… Oh, and for everybody who cannot tell, no, E is not wearing a dress, sadly.

You two, Enjolras and Grantaire, truly complete each other. R takes E down to earth, reminds him that he’s human and not a full time war god; and E gives R the light and the passion he needs to himself stay among us humans. Together you two can be everything and I love you so very much.”

Courfeyrac laid down his hands about the same time as Combeferre stopped talking. They were both best men and they had prepared their speech like this. Ferre, who was a fucking lion, bravely spoke in front of the 250 guests, while Courf said the same thing, slightly modified to suit another narrator, in sign language for all of their friends with poor hearing abilities. 

Courf smiled like the sun. This was possibly the best day of his life, this far. All of his friends where gathered back in his home town in a huge tent out on a green. The evening breeze was mild and carried with it the faint smell of late blooming flowers and burning wood; they had lit a bonfire down by the lake before dinner.

Courf looked around, looked at the proud wedding couple, who held hands with matching gold rings – like their bodies had physically grown together. He looked at Ferre, so brilliant and so brave, and he looked out over the rest of his friends. Marius with his arm around the pregnant Cosette; Joly, Bossuet and Chetta, all seemingly sitting on the same chair; Bahorel, who’s hair was braided in celebration of the occasion; Jehan was crying with happiness and Feuilly, next to him, handed a tissue to Eponine who wiped away her tears and tried not to get makeup on the borrowed dress – Courf looked at it all and took it in. He loved his friends.

When the glasses were raised once more Courf said “Drink with me, to days still to come – to love!”, and they drank to the love of friendship and life and freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> Some time ago, a Tumblr-user had an idea about a deaf Combeferre and they basically wrote the whole part about the presentation at the Corinth. Now, I unfortunately don't remember their username... I would love to thank them for the thought! It got stuck in my head and spun around for days until I had to write this story. If you know who it was I wish you'd let me know. I hope they approve of me using their idea like this, and I'd like to know what they think of what I made out of it :]
> 
> Have a nice day everyone!


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